Historically, stone walls are ground only with hand tools, such as grinders and sand paper. This is due to the limitations of presently existing grinding machines, which are designed for use on stone floors. Such floor grinding machines use horizontally rotating grinding or polishing discs, which generally have rotating rounded diamond sectors, to level, smooth, or clean a stone surface. Gravity acting on the weight of the machine provides the pressure necessary to grind the floor with the grinding or polishing disc.
Some machines come equipped with a rubber sleeve to ensure that dust produced by the grinding process remains contained. Counter-rotating two disc models are also sometimes used to afford greater control to the operator. A floor grinding machine can also utilize water as it grinds the stone to avoid burning the stone. This water is recaptured as part of the grinding and polishing process, typically with a commercial water vacuum.
These floor grinding machines cannot be used to grind a vertical wall. That is, a grinding machine of this design cannot use its own weight to apply pressure to grind or polish a vertical wall, because of gravity and positioning. As such, walls must be ground with hand tools. In addition, the vertical nature of walls makes it difficult to recapture water if water is to be used to cool the surface during grinding or polishing; this means that water will run down the wall and pool where the wall and floor meet, which is undesirable. Accordingly, there is a need and desire for a system capable of grinding and polishing vertical surfaces without hand tools, which can apply proper pressure on the grinding or polishing disc so that surface is ground or polished. In addition, it is also desirable for such a system to have means to recapture any water used as coolant in the grinding or polishing process.